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Next up for Oracle v. Google -- the US Supreme Court?

Google petitions the highest court in the country to overturn a previous appeals court ruling favoring Oracle, which in itself overturned a mixed bag of earlier district court rulings.

Rachel King Staff Writer
Rachel King is a staff writer for ZDNet based in San Francisco.
Rachel King
2 min read

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Oracle sued Google in 2010, alleging that Google's use of 37 Java APIs in its mobile OS constituted patent and copyright infringement. CNET

The United States Supreme Court term opened on Monday, and one of the most prominent patent battles in recent memory could end up on the docket in the near future.

That would be the case of Oracle v. Google, which first launched back in 2011 and seems to have no end in sight. This, presumably, would be the end of the road if the Supreme Court decides to hear the case or not.

Google has petitioned the highest court in the country to overturn a previous appeals court ruling in May favoring Oracle, which in itself overturned a mixed bag of district court rulings back in 2012 that primarily sided with Google.

To recall, Oracle initially sued Google over copyright and patent infringement allegations related to the implementation of the Java programming language on Google's Android mobile operating system. Oracle obtained the rights to Java through its 2010 acquisition of Sun Microsystems.

Oracle argues that Google willingly infringed upon its intellectual property without a license. Google insists that it didn't need a license under fair use laws for the open-source software.

Since then, the tech world and many federal courts have played witness to a long, drawn out legal war involving the aforementioned back-and-forth decisions, constantly changing assessments and assignments of legal fees and damages, and a who's-who of Silicon Valley brought into testify.

The most recent ruling, issued by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, found parts of the code were in fact allowed to be protected by copyright law. That gave the nod to Oracle -- contrary to what was decided by a jury at the US District Court of the Northern District of California in San Francisco two years ago.

For now, the case will continue to hang in the balance. A response from the Supreme Court isn't due until November 7.

This story originally appeared as "Oracle v. Google could end up in the U.S. Supreme Court" on ZDNet.